[nfb-talk] Accessible currency in the best interest ofthe blind?

[T. Joseph Carter]

Ed,

The current US currency denominations are:

$100, $50, $20, $10, $5, $2, $1.

The dollar coin will not replace the dollar bill, even though the dollar
bill lasts an average of 18 months and the coins last decades on average.
People just don't want the dollar to become so much loose change.

With seven denominations, corner clipping could be done (16 possible
corner styles, minus the ones that would be ambiguous.

My suggestion was to adjust the length, but not the width.  If the width
stayed the same and bills got only shorter, machines wouldn't need a
redesign, but mechanisms might.  They'd probably need redesigning with
clipped corners too, but it's a smaller change in both cases (which means
it costs less..)

Keep in mind that machines already exist that take $2, $5, $10, and $20,
and all of these have needed multiple revisions over the past decade.

I think the sizes would seem "less weird" to people, and again the cash
drawers and the like wouldn't change if just the length of the bill
changed.  The only reason both length and width would change is to allow
for the dollar to remain as it is.  I propose we change the dollar too, at
the end of this process, and use the interim time to make this as painless
for businesses as possible.  It applies to clipping corners just as well.

Joseph

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 08:24:00PM -0400, Ed Meskys wrote:
> I agree with Joseph Carter about a slow transition as currency gets
> replaced, but instead of making bills different shapes corners can be
> clipped, causing no change in cash drawer size or money reading machines.
> $100 is unchanged, $50 has one corner clipped, $20 has two corners on a long
> edge clipped, $10 on a short edge, and $5 on diagonally opposite corners.
> Bring back the /$2 bill with three corners clipped, and replace the $1 bill
> with the $1 coin. Or just make the $1 bill clipped on 4 corners. But I
> really think it is time to replace the $1 bill with a coin, as in Canada
> (which even has a $2 coin) and England, whose #1 coin is worth about $2.
> 
> 
> Edmund R. Meskys
> NIEKAS Publications
> National Federation of the Blind of N.H.
> Moultonboro Lions Club
> edmeskys at localnet.com
> 322 Whittier Hwy
> Moultonboro NH 03254-3627
> my credo:
> Clinton lied, nothing happened
> Bush lied, thousands died
> and over 3,000 permanently brain injured
> 
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